https://janlukas.blog
37 posts · 7 Votes · 2 Followers
Tech 54% · Life 35% · Writing 5% · Art 3% · Culture 3%
Subscribe via RSS
Some time ago I posted about my experience blocking one country and some ASNs directly via iptables from my mail server. It seems like there’s an even better source of IPs and networks to block. The Spamhaus “Don’t Route Or Peer Lists (DROP)” lists. Currently my mail setup is configured to block everything from these lists. After that, failed login attempts are blocked using fail2ban. And both Postscreen and Rspamd are configured with the usual DNS block lists (like Spamhaus), but also with…
Why spend 80 € on a simple cap? Because it fits my big head perfectly, is very comfortable, offers good sun protection, is high-quality, and also keeps me from being blinded by the sun. With this cap and my hat, my collection of summer headwear should now be complete. Interactions & Comments
I am currently in the process of migrating to a new mailserver setup that is integrated into my normal hosting setup on a new VPS at netcup. This time, the setup is based on the Docker images and configuration from a project called docker-mailserver (I previously used the other more popular docker-mailserver). It’s less monolithic and more flexible to adjust configuration etc. It also has a web UI to configure users, domains and aliases. On my old setup, I used the European AWS’s SES as relay…
We recently had a test photo shooting with our wedding photographer. The photos that came out of this session are beautiful. I took the chance to finally update my profile picture (the last one was from 2022) with a cropped version of one of the new photos. My appearance has actually changed quite a bit, especially over the past year. I have new glasses, a beard now, and shorter hair. Interactions & Comments
For the regular planning workshop at work (my second since I started), I have to be in Schwäbisch Hall from Monday to Wednesday. As train tickets are cheaper on Saturday than on Sunday and I was eager to explore the city anyway, I decided to already arrive yesterday (Saturday). Today (Sunday) I did my planned city discovery. Schwäbisch Hall isn’t big; the city itself has just over 40 thousand inhabitants, and the whole county has 200 thousand. But it has a beautiful, medieval, and picturesque…
As I told you, I recently switched to mainly using NetBird instead of Tailscale. NetBird released their “Bring your own proxy” functionality on the cloud-hosted version today. That gave me the perfect reason to finally try a VPS at netcup. I ordered the smallest one with just one core and one gigabyte of memory, but all it has to do is the reverse proxy work. My impression about netcup is better than I expected. I am used to Hetzner Cloud, and while netcup’s interface isn’t as fancy, they…
I have a couple of restic backup containers running across my servers, all based on the resticker image. It’s a basic part of every server configuration I use. Backups are executed on cron schedules. But until today, I had no visibility into whether they actually succeeded. So I had no idea one of my backups didn’t run for some weeks due to some “locks” in the repository. Since I already run Uptime Kuma for monitoring my blog and other self-hosted services, I figured I could use it for…
I took my bike out for a short ride again yesterday. The last days it was rainy and stormy, but yesterday, there was a bit of sun again. Also wind, but I took it relaxed. Nature also really calmed me down. I haven’t really realized sunset is so late, and I can still easily start a short ride in the evening. Interactions & Comments
Many news sites, including a few German ones, are now trying to get you to add them as a preferred source on Google. This can be annoying. Why should I do this? And why do you try to remind me on every visit? And why do you even assume I am using Google News? Are the sites so desperate because AI is reducing the number of people visiting them? Interactions & Comments
And just like that, another month has flown by. Time for my usual look back. The month started with my longest single-day bike tour ever: 136 km from Braunschweig to Gifhorn, Celle, and back. It was pretty exhausting, but that didn’t stop me from trying again at Pentecost. I had planned to ride various national and international cycling routes from near Hildesheim all the way to Kassel. 220 km over two days. But the heat, the effort, and my heavy bike made me reconsider, and in the end I only…
Regarding my last post: While I spent plenty of thoughts on the whole implementation, most of the coding work was actually done by DeepSeek V4 Flash and Pro, and I just supervised and criticized it. While I mainly used Amp Free in the last few months, Amp Free is dead. The daily free usage was cut to 5 dollars, and with the expensive prices of Claude Opus, that’s used up pretty fast. GitHub Copilot (Student) isn’t also really useful anymore. So I discovered OpenCode. There are free models, but…
The moment when you finally deploy a change on which you worked over some days, trying to think through every possible use case and scenario, and you just hope it’s working flawlessly. 🙏 Such a moment was just now for me! I finally and drastically improved image optimization with GoBlog. Responsive images and AVIF support. Using imgproxy. Part two of this major refactoring will be to find a way to map every image “optimized” using the old implementation to its original image. Just by comparing…
As I wrote, I had planned a bikepacking trip covering a total of 224 km. Well, things didn’t quite go as planned. Shortly after my post, I changed the route due to a lack of good camping options along the way. I read some bad reviews about the campsite I originally planned to stay at. Instead of a round trip, I planned an equally long tour from Nordstemmen to Kassel (my former home), following various national and international cycling routes. I also found several campsites along the river…
I planned a bikepacking trip for the coming weekend, but I am not really sure if I overestimate my power, if I will eat enough, and if I will be able to put up the tent on my own. 😅 I watched so many YouTube videos on bikepacking in the recent years that I really need to try a multi-day trip (just two days for now, lol) with a tent on my own. Two years ago, I went from Kassel to Braunschweig (215 km) in three days but slept in cozy hotels and reached the day’s destination already by noon. This…
Bad news about Bitwarden. Apparently their CEO changed, and everything looks like they are preparing for a sale. Bitwarden has also stopped listing “Inclusion” and “Transparency” as tentpole values on its careers page. On his LinkedIn page, Sullivan, Bitwarden’s new CEO, describes himself as having “robust experience in all facets of mergers and acquisitions, including direct experience with leading PE firms Hg, Vista Equity Partners, and TA Associates.” There’s a bit of an irony in this story:…
Almost two months ago, I switched back to Ubuntu as my primary operating system. While I still have a Windows 11 VM, I never really use it. Ubuntu 26.04 fits all my needs I had since switching to it. While I installed it during the beta, the final LTS version has also been released since then. I used Linux already many years ago as the primary operating system and tried different distributions because all promised something special. But nowadays I think the distribution should provide a stable…
It is now almost half a year in my new job, and I think it was the right move. It feels like the time since I started has flown by, as if I had only started yesterday. Every day, I learn something new, both technical and regarding the topic of certificate management, while also contributing what I already know. The team (a really nice team!) and project are smaller than with the previous job, but I feel like I actually prefer that team size. Enough people to find support when needed, but not…
I’ve been a Tailscale user for almost five years. Today, I stumbled across NetBird again and largely replaced Tailscale with it. Why? For one, the reverse proxy feature: Setting up public services is much easier with it compared to Tailscale Funnel. It lets you use a custom domain or even multiple ones. It’s much easier to configure via the web UI. And it lets you configure different authentication options in front of the services. Sure, it’s a pretty new feature, and there’s still one use case…
Now I am 26 + 1 years old. My better half made me this delicious cake and gave me these beautiful flowers and some cool presents! Interactions & Comments
Upgrading the valves on my bike to Clik valves is a real game changer. Straightforward to use and fixes a few annoying issues with the previous Presta valves (for example, accidentally unscrewing the valve while removing the pump). Another cool thing: there are conversion kits from Schwalbe available for both Presta and Dunlop valves, so I can also upgrade my other bike and my fiancé’s bike. Inflating tires is now a piece of cake! Interactions & Comments
April is now over too, so it’s time to look back on the month. This time, I’ll keep it really brief. At the beginning of the month, we spent a few days at the North Sea over Easter, where we relaxed but also went on a few day trips. It was very relaxing. After that, everyday life returned. Work, and sometimes going for a bike ride in the evenings after work. On Sundays, our (now expanded) dance class. Occasionally sorting out a few things for the wedding (or booking the honeymoon). And of…
Yesterday was a tough day, even though that wasn’t the plan at all. It was a holiday and the weather was perfect, so I figured I might as well go for a bike ride. What else was I going to do… I checked the wind direction; it was coming from the southeast, so I figured I should head northwest. I planned a route from Braunschweig via Gifhorn to Celle. From Celle, I could have taken the train home; it would have taken two hours. The naive thought that it would only take three hours by bike led me…
Stalwart v0.16 was released, and with it support for automatic DNS updates for things like TLSA records (DANE). It also supports Bunny DNS, so it’s interesting for me. Will I replace my current mail server (with docker-mailserver) with Stalwart soon? 👀 Interactions & Comments
I recently wrote about my internet problems. While O2-DE has finally fixed it and also confirmed they found and fixed something (after it was already working), I also decided to give in and spend another 30 euros per month on fiber to the home. Last Thursday a technician was here to drill through the wall into the stairwell and do the cabling. After he went away, a neighbor told me her internet isn’t working anymore. 🫠 On Friday was the supposed activation day, and surprise, the fiber…
I made a list of the bikes I use. 🚲️ Interactions & Comments
Since I bought my new laptop, a used Dell Latitude 5430, I have been searching for alternative displays, as the display it came with was the 250-nit version, so not very bright, and the color coverage was also quite limited. A few days ago, while again doing a price comparison, I found a listing of the official replacement display (Dell VC07Y) with 400 nits and 100% sRGB coverage for 115 € instead of the official over 300 € or some other listings with 230 €. I instantly ordered it and also…
My 5G internet has worked again flawlessly since Friday afternoon. I have the suspicion it’s because, since today, there are new laws that define when mobile providers underperform and people have the right to reduce their bills; but it might also be just a reconfiguration or upgrade of cell towers nearby. I noticed the internet got faster as well, now with download speeds often about 400 Mbps (instead of 350 before, with a contract limit of 500) and upload speeds of 60 Mbps (instead of 35…
The last days I was quite busy mentally. So here are some thoughts I just need to write down to get them off my head and give you something to read. 😄
When I switched to Linux, I also enabled that Firefox setting to disable custom fonts on websites. And you know what? It actually looks better this way! No broken fonts, because some fonts are mapped to ugly fonts. Just my default font, which is Noto for now.
We spent our first vacation this year in a small flat on the North Sea coast of Lower Saxony. It was windy at times, but generally quite nice and relaxed. We visited a couple of museums, saw a few small towns in that area, spent a couple of hours at a seawater pool, and also did a boat trip to watch seals.
